Geospatial Scientist Talent Cluster at MSU Recognized by NASA Program

September 4, 2019

The NASA Land-Cover/Land-Use Change (LCLUC) Program has awarded four of the nine proposals funded from its latest call to faculty now affiliated with the MSU Center for Global Change and Earth Observations (CGCEO).  This recognition of MSU talent marks a milestone of long-term strategic planning and growth for the CGCEO.  Dr. Jiaguo Qi, CGCEO Director, highlights the Center’s critical mass of talent as “striking at the core value of MSU to create positive impact on people’s lives at a global level”.

The following projects were selected from the 2018 NASA LCLUC solicitation for land-use transitions in Asia:

Interdependent dynamics of food, energy and water in Kazakhstan and Mongolia: Connecting LCLUC to the transitional socioecological systems ($797,540).

  • Jiquan Chen (PI) Landscape Ecology & Ecosystem Science (LEES) Lab Center for Global Change and Earth Observations (CGCEO), and Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences;
  • Jinhua Zhao (co-PI) Professor, Department of Economics, Department of Agricultural, Food and Resource Economics;
  • Additional collaborators in Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Maine.

Divergent local responses to globalization: Urbanization, land transition, and environmental changes in Southeast Asia ($748,148).

  • Peilei Fan (PI), Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at School of Planning, Design, and Construction and the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations;
  • Joseph Messina (co-PI) formerly of MSU and now Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Alabama;
  • Additional collaborators in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, The Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina, and Michigan.

Atmospheric teleconnections and anthropogenic telecouplings drive land change in Central Asian highlands: How environmental changes, migration, and remittances threaten montane agropastoralist livelihoods and community viability ($1,056,823).

  • Geoffrey Henebry (PI) (Step-1 proposal submitted when Dr. Henebry was Professor at South Dakota State University and Step-2 proposal submitted when a John A. Hannah Distinguished Visiting Professor at MSU). Now MSU Professor, Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences and the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations;
  • Elizabeth Mack (co-PI), Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences;
  • Additional collaborators in Germany, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.

Forced and truncated agrarian transitions in Asia through the lens of field size change ($772,425).

  • Lin Yan (PI) (Step-1 and Step-2 proposals submitted when Dr. Yan was an Assistant Research Professor at South Dakota State University).  Now MSU Assistant Professor, Center for Global Change and Earth Observations;
  • David Roy (co-PI), Professor of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences, and the Center for Global Change and Earth Observations;
  • Jefferson Fox, Director of Research, East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii;
  • Additional collaborators in China, Thailand and Vietnam.

The four awards provide evidence of the interdisciplinary nature of the scientific research supported by the CGCEO and the NASA LCLUC Program, both focused on developing interdisciplinary science with a high level of societal relevance and a scientific foundation for understanding the sustainability, vulnerability, and resilience of human land-use and terrestrial ecosystems at regional to global scales. NASA and other agency satellite data are integral to the NASA LCLUC program, and the combination of physical and social science needed to understand the process of land use change, makes the LCLUC program unique within NASA.
https://lcluc.umd.edu/content/program-priorities 

“Collectively, this team of researchers will create new knowledge on the role of human managed land systems”, notes Dr. Qi.  It will be exciting to follow the outcome of this body of research over the next three years covered by these awards.  We will stay posted to learn what this talented group of MSU scientists, together with their US and international colleagues, plan to do next.